starch, and the
exceedingly high per-centage of flesh-formers which beans contain, prove
that they are better adapted as food for beasts of burthen than for the
fattening of stock. Oats, Indian corn, or oil-cake, will be found to
produce a greater increase of meat than equal money's worth of beans
or peas, and I would therefore recommend the restriction of leguminous
seeds, under ordinary circumstances, to horses and bulls. It has been
stated, on good authority, that when oats are given whole to horses,
a large proportion passes unchanged through the animal's body, but that
on the addition of beans, the oats are thoroughly digested.

COMPOSITION OF LEGUMINOUS SEEDS.

--------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+----------
| Common|Foreign| Peas.|Lentils.| Winter
| Beans.| Beans.| | | Tares
| | | | |(foreign).
--------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+----------
Water | 13.0 | 14.5 | 14.0 | 13.0 | 15.5
Flesh-formers | 25.5 | 23.0 | 23.5 | 24.0 | 26.5
Fat-formers | 48.5 | 48.7 | 50.0 | 50.5 | 47.5
Woody fibre | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 9.0
Mineral matter | 3.0 | 3.8 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 1.5
--------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+----------
| 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0
--------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------+----------

_Oil Seeds._--The seeds of a great variety of plants, such as the flax,
hemp, rape, mustard, cotton, and sunflower, are exceedingly rich in oil,
some of them containing nearly half their weight of that substance. Of
these oil-seeds there are many which might with advantage be employed as
fattening, food, although one only--linseed--has come into general use
for that purpose.

_Rape-seeds_ closely resemble linseeds in composition, but they are
considerably cheaper. They contain an acrid substance, but the large
proportion of oil with which it is associated almost completely
disguises its unpleasant flavor.

_Linseed_ is one of the most valuable kinds of food which could be given
to fattening animals. Its exceedingly high proportion of ready-formed
fatty matter, the great comparative solubility of its constituents, and
its mild and agreeable flavor, constitute it an article superior to
linseed cake. The laxative propert